News audiences in the United States (US) are discarding television and newspapers and using the Internet as their main source of information in a trend that could eventually see the demise of local papers, a new study has claimed.
"As online use has increased, the audiences of older media have declined," Harvard University professor Thomas Patterson said in a report on the year-long study issued by the university's Shorenstein Centre on the Press, Politics and Public Policy. "In the past year alone... newspaper circulation has fallen by three percent, broadcast news has lost a million viewers," said the study titled "Creative Destruction: An Exploratory Look and News on the Internet."
Based on an examination of traffic to 160 websites over a year-long period, the research found that traffic to newspaper-based sites has leveled off. The overall traffic level, however, hides important differences within the newspaper sector. The web sites of known newspapers — the New York Times, Washington Post, and USA Today — are gaining audience. On average, their site traffic increased by 10 per cent over the past year. In contrast, the websites of most other newspapers — whether in large, medium-sized, or small cities — have lost audience. Their sites on average have substantially fewer visitors now than a year ago.
The websites of “brand name” television networks, such as CNN, ABC, CBS, NBC, MSNBC, and Fox, experienced increased traffic during the past year. In fact, their traffic increase exceeded 30 per cent on an average. The websites of local commercial television and radio stations also gained audience, though at a slower pace than that of the “brand names.”
The biggest gains in audience occurred among the non-traditional news providers. The sites of search engines, service providers, aggregators, and bloggers grew faster on average than the sites of traditional news providers, whether print, broadcast, or cable. The sites of Google, Yahoo, AOL, and MSN, along with sites such as newsvine.com, topix.net, digg.com and reddit.com, saw large increases in traffic during the past year.
The Web, the report said, particularly threatens daily newspapers. They were among the first to post news on the Internet but their initial advantage has all but disappeared in the face of increased competition from electronic media and non-traditional providers. The Internet is also a larger threat to local news organisations than those with national reputations. Because it reduces the influence of geography on people’s choice of a news source, the Internet inherently favors “brand names” — those relatively few news organisations that readily come to the mind when people seek news on the Internet.
Although the increase in Web traffic to the sites of non-traditional news providers is a threat to traditional news organisations, the latter do have strengths they can leverage on the Web. Local news organisations are “brand names” within their communities, which can be used to their advantage. Their offline audience reach can also be used effectively to drive traffic to their sites. Most importantly, they have a product — the news — that is in public demand. Ironically, the report said, some news organisations do not feature the day’s news prominently on their websites, forgoing their natural advantage.
The research was funded by a grant from the Carnegie Corporation of New York for the consideration of the Carnegie-Knight Task Force on the Future of Journalism Education. The Carnegie-Knight Initiative was launched in 2005 and focuses on curriculum reform at graduate schools of journalism, a student internship programme called News21, research, and creating a platform for educators to speak on journalism policy and education issues.
